


At The Edge of The Water

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Loneliness, Near Death Experiences, Near Drowning, POV First Person, Self-Harm, the ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 15:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Alec Hardy, sitting near the edge of the ocean, recalls a time he almost drowned as a child.





	At The Edge of The Water

**Author's Note:**

> Because Chibnall never explained what happened to Alec when he went to Broadchurch as a child

Wet sand always seems to stick to your clothes, even long after it has dried. The uneven grains that characterized this section the southern coast of England were no exception. 

Somehow I always ended up closer the waterline then I intended. The sand was cool, as though it had absorbed the chill of the cold, vast sea. Logically I knew it wasn’t really the sea proper, merely the edge of where the English Channel broadened to meet the Atlantic. But the coast of France was nearly two hundred miles south and the ocean looked like it went on forever. 

In the daylight the water was dark against the pale sky, but at night it seemed to meld into velvet blackness. Moonless nights were the eeriest, when there was no reflection to demarcate the surface of the water. Especially when the clouds drifted across the stars.  
There is nothing so uncaring as the sea at night, stretching out into eternity. It could swallow you, consume you without a trace. Just the icy embrace of the deep, the taste of saltwater and suffocating inky darkness. 

There was something about the immensity of the void that was almost a siren’s song. It was terrifying how still the water looked. People could understand being afraid of fast moving water. The dark ocean wasn’t threatening. It waited. Daring you to come closer. Painfully cold waves washed over my shoes, soaking into my socks. 

Why did the tide always seem to be coming in and never going out?

The shock of pain soon gave way to numbness.

Shadowy fragments of memory drifted through my mind. Something that has happened on this beach long ago. The impression of a mad desire to walk out into the ocean. An escape. Or a craving for sensation. Denied warmth, I would have cold. A feeling of calm that in retrospect I recognized as shock. The waves closing over me. I was never a strong swimmer and there was a current under the surface. I was completely alone, and I didn’t realize the peril I was in until I had actually managed to take in a few gasps of air when the waves brought me above water. The oxygen must have reached my brain because I realized I was frantic. I fought but was entirely at the mercy of the ocean. I tried to swim perpendicular to the current, lungs aching. Hypothermia and exhaustion set in at about the same moment and I felt for the first time a pain in the left side of my chest. I think I must have lost consciousness shortly after that.

But the ocean gave me up. I awoke on the shore, shivering violently. I remember this much more clearly. My hands were purple and my fingernails were a shade of vivid blue didn’t think was possible. The fact that I was alive meant I couldn’t have been in the water much longer than few minutes, but it felt like it had been hours.

I don’t know how long it was before they found me. 

I stood up. My clothes had gotten wet again and the salt would remain embedded in the fabric until I bothered to wash them. Which I had been meaning to do. Eventually.


End file.
